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Dallas County jail gets passing marks in new sheriff's first year

State regulators have recommended that jailers get a refresher on suicide-prevention training, said Sheriff Marian Brown.

Dallas County sheriff's deputies applauded Friday as the Texas Commission on Jail Standards announced to county officials at the Dallas County Administration Building that the jail passed its annual inspection.(Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

When state jail inspectors arrived Monday in North Texas, they saw an ambulance waiting outside the Dallas County jail.

A jailer had been assaulted by an inmate and needed medical attention. That wasn't a good sign, said Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

But on Friday, Herklotz gave Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown a glowing review of the jail, which passed its 10th annual state inspection in a row.

“This jail was very clean,” Herklotz said at a public briefing announcing the results. “We had very few complaints and/or issues.”

A decade ago, the Dallas County jail finally overcame a string of failed inspections. It had long struggled with crowding, inadequate staffing, faulty fire-safety systems and poor sanitation and maintenance. For a few years ending in 2011, the lockup was also under federal oversight for dangerously inadequate medical care.

The Lew Sterrett Justice Center was also briefly out of compliance last fall after an inmate, 61-year-old Ricky Ray Alvis, died of natural causes. A state inspector conducting a special inquiry determined that jail staff had not observed Alvis face-to-face every 30 minutes as required by law, despite logs that indicated those checks had occurred.

Officials with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department said supervisors now do random checks of surveillance video to confirm that jailers are doing their rounds.

Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown speaks after the Texas Commission on Jail Standards announces to Dallas County commissioners and Sheriff's Department that the Dallas County Jail passed a weeklong inspection. At left is Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

Herklotz and his team have recommended that jailers get a refresher on suicide-prevention training, Brown said. Inspectors also had a small issue with the wording of a policy, but state and county officials said that has been fixed.

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Brown and Dallas County commissioners John Wiley Price and Theresa Daniel — who were joined at the meeting by new Commissioner J.J. Koch — praised jailers for their work. The Dallas County jail is managed by 1,300 employees in the Sheriff’s Department.

“My mother has a saying that basically says you don’t have to clean up for company if you always keep it clean,” Price said. “You’ve done that.”

The passing inspection is good for employee morale, said Brown, who officially was sworn in as the elected sheriff earlier this month after filling the role on an interim basis for a year.

“People get excited because they realize that their work is not in vain,” Brown said.

Herklotz told jailers that a young woman working at the Holiday Inn where the state inspectors were staying told them she had spent time at the Dallas County jail and was “very complimentary.” The room burst into laughter.

“She wasn’t too keen on a couple of your neighbors,” Herklotz said, “but she had good things to say about y’all.”